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ʿALĪ HAMADĀNĪ

ʿALĪ B. ŠEHĀB-AL-DĪN B. MOḤAMMAD HAMADĀNĪ, MĪR SAYYED, surnamed ʿAlī-e Ṯānī, Šāh-e Hamadān, and Amīr-e Kabīr, major 8th/14th century Sufi saint. He was born at Hamadān on Raǰab 714/22 October 1314 into an influential family claiming descent from Imam Ḥosayn. He was initiated into Sufi practices by Maḥmūd Mazdaqānī (d. 766/1365) and ʿAlī Dōstī (d. 734/1334), disciples of the Kobrawī shaikh ʿAlāʾ-al-dawla Semnānī (d. 736/1336). Hamadānī led the life of an itinerant Sufi, traveling extensively in the Asian parts of the Islamic world (Ḥeǰāz, Syria, Anatolia, Iraq, Iran, Ḵᵛārazm, and Transoxiana), where he allegedly met 1,400 Sufi saints (obtaining the eǰāza from some thirty of them) before he reached the climax of his career in Badaḵšān and Kashmir. Setting out in 734/1334, he journeyed for approximately twenty years, for a time in the company of Ašraf Jahāngīr Semnānī (d. 808/1405). In 754/1353 he married, settled down at Hamadān, and reorganized Mazdaqānī’s ḵānaqāh. Possibly fearing for his life at Balḵ when Tīmūr conquered Khorasan (772/1370), Hamadānī migrated to Ḵottalān in Badaḵšān, where his son Moḥammad was born in 774/1372 and Jaʿfar Badaḵšī became his disciple in 774/1373. Although Hamadānī may have visited Kashmir as early as 774/1373 during the reign of the Šāhmīrī sultan Šehāb-al-dīn (760-80/1359-78; cf. C. E. Bosworth, The Islamic Dynasties, Edinburgh, 1967, pp. 196-98), it was only in 781/1379 during the reign of Sultan Qoṭb-al-dīn (780-96/1378-94) that he came to settle at Srinagar. In 784/1383 he traveled to Turkestan and Khatay, returning to Kashmir in 785/1384. He died near Kūnār on Ḏu’l-ḥeǰǰa 786/19 January 1385, while on a journey. His body was transported to Ḵottalān (Kuliab in Soviet Tajikestan), where his shrine is still extant.

Hamadānī’s influence greatly contributed to the spread of Islam in Kashmir under his followers, known as the Hamadānīya. Their main centers were the ḵānaqāh-e maymūn at Ḵottalān and the ḵānaqāh-e moʿallā at Srinagar (built in 798/1395, destroyed by fire but rebuilt in 885/1480); they had minor ḵānaqāhs at Rostabazar, Tral, Vachi, and Matan. Hamadānī’s chief disciples were Nūr-al-dīn Jaʿfar Badaḵšī, his biographer, who negotiated with Tīmūr’s camp in 801/1398 as emissary of Sekandar Botšekan, sultan of Kashmir (796-819/1394-1416); his son Mīr Moḥammad Hamadānī (d. 854/1450 in Ḵottalān), who settled in Srinagar about 805/1402 and wielded considerable influence during Sekandar’s reign before leaving Kashmir in 817/1414; his son-in-law Esḥāq Ḵottalānī (executed in 826/1423 by order of Šāhroḵ), whose disciples split into the followers of Sayyed Moḥammad Nūrbaḵš (d. 869/1464), the later Nūrbaḵšīya, and the followers of ʿAbdallāh Barzīšābādī (d. 872/1468), the later Ḏahabīya; Qawām-al-dīn Badaḵšī, his companion on the journey to Kashmir; and, according to Qoššāšī (al-Semṭ al-maǰīd, Hyderabad, 1327/1909, p. 77), ʿAbdallāh Šaṭṭārī (d. 832/1428-29), the founder of the ŠaṭÂ¡ṭārī selsela. Hamadānī’s biography, Ḵolāṣat al-manāqeb, was compiled immediately after his death in 787/1385 by Jaʿfar Badaḵšī, while a biography based on it, Manqabat-e ǰawāher (also known as Masṭūrāt), was written in Kashmir in the middle of the 9th/15th century by the Shiʿite Ḥaydar Badaḵšī, who had belonged to the Šaṭṭārī selsela before becoming a disciple of Barzīšābādī.

Hamadānī was the author of some 100 works, most of them brief Sufi treatises, written chiefly in Persian but occasionally in Arabic. Many of them still exist only in manuscript form (Brockelmann, GAL II, p. 221, S. II, p. 311; Storey, I, pp. 36, 946ff.). His best known works are: Ḏaḵīrat al-molūk (Amritsar, 1321/1903, Lahore, 1323/1905; Urdu tr. Ḡolām Qāder, Nahī al-solūk, Lahore, 1333/1915), an ethical code in Persian on personal and political conduct, which was translated several times into Turkish with commentary for the benefit of Ottoman rulers during the 10th-11th/16th-17th centuries; Čehel asrār (Amritsar, 1303/1886, 1333/1915; ed. S. A. Boḵārī, Tehran, 1388/1968), a Persian dīvān on mystical themes also known as Ḡazlīyāt, employing the taḵalloṣ of ʿAlī or ʿAlāʾī (in deference to ʿAlāʾ-al-dawla Semnānī; Awrād-e fatḥīya (Lahore, 1289/1872, Cawnpore, 1300/1882, Lucknow, 1293/1876 with a commentary by Moḥammad-Jaʿfar Jaʿfarī; Urdu tr. Ḥakīm Moḥammad Esḥāq, Karachi, 1389/1969), a popular Arabic collection of Sufi invocatory prayers; and al-Mawadda fi’l-qorabāʾ (Bombay, 1310/1892-93, Lucknow, 1370/1950; cf. J. N. Hollister, The Shiʿa of India, London, 1953, p. 143), an Arabic collection of Hadiths in praise of the Prophet’s family.

Hamadānī’s personality and thought are marked by a harmony of contrast that permeates his religious practice and his Sufi outlook. Although he considered himself a scion of sayyed stock, accorded ʿAlī an exceptional position in his Arabic Hadith collections, and was later surnamed ʿAlī-e Ṯānī by his followers, he nonetheless professed a typically Sunni creed and successively belonged to two Sunni maḏhabs: He began as a Ḥanafī but changed to the Šāfeʿī school after dream visitations by Imam Šāfeʿī and the Prophet Moḥammad (cf. M. Molé, “Les Kubrawiya entre Sunnisme et Shiisme aux huitième et neuvième siècles de l’hégire,” REI 29, 1961, p. 114). By investiture with the garment of fotūwa and the mantle of taṣawwof, he was initiated into two parallel lines of affiliation (selsela) that had previously converged in Naǰm-al-dīn Kobrā (d. 618/1221; cf. F. Meier, Die Fawāʾiḥ al-ğamāl wa-fawātiḥ al-ğalāl des Nağm ad-dīn al-Kubrā, Wiesbaden, 1957, p. 34). Hamadānī adopted Kobrā’s fundamental principles of the Sufi path (dah qāʿeda), followed the Khorasanian tradition of Sufism and compiled Resāla-ye manāzel al-sālekīn in emulation of Anṣārī’s Manāzel al-sāʾerīn (ed. S. Laugier de Beaurecueil, Cairo, 1382/1962). In his mystical philosophy Hamadānī was influenced by Ebn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240); he summarized Foṣūṣ al-ḥekam in a Persian abstract, Ḥall-e foṣūṣ. In addition, he wrote a Persian commentary, Resāla-ye mašāreb al-aḏwāq, on thirty-two verses of the famous Qaṣīda mīmīya ḵamrīya by ʿOmar b. Fāreż (d. 632/1235) (ed. M. Rīāż, FIZ 20, 1353 Š./1974, pp. 266-315; cf. R. A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, Cambridge, 1921, pp. 183-88).

Hamadānī’s metaphysical speculation, as it emerges from the philosophical sections of his works that are accessible in print, is marked by a duality of aspects integrated into a monistic system. God, the necessary being (wāǰeb al-woǰūd), is one and unique in His eternal and sublime essence (ḏāt-e motaʿālīa). He is the Omnipotent, the Creator, and the Everlasting Presence. The universe, from the divine throne to the planet earth, subsists through His majesty and power; it is at once the subject of His knowledge and the object of His will. All thought and activity, potential as well as actual, are governed by His statute and subordinated to His decree. In passing from the world of ideas (maʿānī) through spirits and archetypes (meṯāl) to the physical world, indeterminate being receives its manifold forms and is made articulate in concrete existence. The microcosm of man, reflecting the macrocosm of the universe, is composed of subtle, luminous substance (ǰawhar-e laṭīf-e nūrānī) and coarse, tenebrous substance (ǰawhar-e kaṯīf-e ẓolmānī). Man is endowed with an inner scale of organs of consciousness (nafs, qalb, serr, rūḥ) leading to the innermost core (ḵafī, aḵfā), where the attributes of the divine presence are made manifest through the experience of ecstasy. It is at the point of gnosis (maʿrefat) that man discovers his “descent” from the divine presence as the basis of theosophy (asās-e ʿerfān), at the same time that he realizes his “ascent” to the divine presence as the scale of certitude (meʿrāǰ-e īqān). Yet mystic experience is rooted in a double outward observance: 1. Submission (eslām), i.e., the practice of purification (ṭahāra) on the basis of the pillars of religion (arkān al-dīn); and 2. faith (īmān), i.e., profession (eqrār), assent (taṣdīq), and works (ʿamal) founded on belief in the eschatological realities of the Koran.